


In Return for Grace

by the_dala



Series: North and South of the River [7]
Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Permanent Injury, Reunions, Threesome - M/M/M, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 16:04:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3698447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_dala/pseuds/the_dala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'He lost track of parts of himself – what he was, what he had done, what had been done to him – but he didn't care because he knew who he was, or rather remembered.'</p><p>James waits at the end of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Return for Grace

**Author's Note:**

> Title from U2's "Beautiful Day." This is the penultimate chapter of this series.
> 
> Warning for depiction of past traumatic injuries.
> 
> I'm archiving my old PotC fic - this was originally published on February 27th, 2004.

Time began to pass in a way James wasn't used to. Before, there had been a definite progression from day to day, dinner to dinner, voyage to voyage. It was linear, that passage of time, and each cog in the wheel was as important as any other.

But what was brought into such sharp relief quickly threw much of the rest of his life into shadow on those nights he spent alone. He subsisted, and he waited, often somewhat less than patiently. Many times he vowed to shut them out when next they came knocking on his door or his window. Once or twice he even fastened the locks with a boldness he did not feel. Before he could flee the room, however, Will would smile at him through the glass, or Jack would start singing lustily, and he would give up the ruse in silent gratitude. There was no time for jealousy, not with the way they dashed in and out of his life.

Eventually he stopped trying to refuse the trinkets they brought him. Will always rolled his eyes at Jack’s insistence, but he made it clear that he had a hand in the choosing of each gift, vouching for its legitimacy. “Bought and paid for, yes,” James would argue, “with _stolen_ money!” Jack would fix him with a keen, level gaze and ask him if he really wanted to have this conversation all the way through.

The gifts were accepted.

They were gewgaws, mostly – little glittery things that caught Jack’s eye in foreign markets or the parlors of rich widows he’d conned. James protested that they were things he’d never buy for himself, pretty though they were, and Will said that of course that was the point. He stuffed them in a false bottom of his bureau where his maid would not come upon them and inquire where he had gotten a jade giraffe figurine, a glass brooch in the shape of a gecko, a snake-armed bronze miniature of Kali, a bright green handkerchief made of the finest silk China had to offer, cufflinks winking with emeralds...

Jack had a newfound fondness for green and he blamed it entirely on James. Another gift of emeralds came in the form of an earring, a tiny stud that Jack swore no one would ever notice and he wouldn't even have to wear it all the time – wouldn't it look just splendid with his eyes and his dark hair? After refusing to let his ear be pierced and being badgered about it for ten minutes without ease, James had enlisted Will’s help in directing the focus of Jack’s attention elsewhere, namely on the two of them tangled together in front of the fire. The play of firelight on pale skin always appealed to Jack’s sense of aesthetics. James really should have known better, should have watched him more carefully even if he didn't expect to be woken up in the middle of the night by what felt like a mad bee stinging his right earlobe. Jack had babbled insincere apologies as he twisted a bit of wire in the hole left by the heated needle, sponging away blood with his sleeve. Will had been nearly as annoyed as James, though probably more from being awoken by incensed shrieking, but pointed out that the damage was already done. James took offense immediately, only forgiving them after they’d doctored his wig so that the curls would hide the puncture. He became so involved with extracting suitable retribution from Jack that he nearly forgot the incident which had prompted the necessity.

He remembered it keenly after they left, two days later. Taking out the wire he had almost forgotten about, he put the emerald in his swollen lobe and stared at his reflection. If the intended effect had been to make him look piratical, it did not succeed.

The gifts were hidden, but they never had an opportunity to gather dust. He brought them out from time to time during those long lonely stretches, laying them in a neat line across his bed or along the mantel. Sometimes it was in order of when they’d been given, sometimes it was by size or coloring, and sometimes it was completely haphazard. He’d touch them one by one and think up stories for explanation or embellishment, stories later whispered in the dark to a rapt audience of two. He often slept with the Dutch sampler under his pillow, thinking that perhaps its brown cross-stitched swallows would flutter into his dreams and bring two wayward pirates with them. The smooth lump of green sea glass and the flat blue-gray stone Jack swore he’d fished out of the open mouth of a two-foot-wide frog by the Ganges were frequently tucked into a pocket to be idly fingered while his mind was meant to be on his work. They were cool when the day was hot, but more importantly, they spoke of promise and regret and apology in ways that the men who’d given them never could.

Time passed in a strange manner, but it did pass – a year, sliding between his fingertips before he could even feel its approach. Then two years, three years, and then...then the world ended.

They found him in Kingston four months after the fires. It had been three months before that since the last visit. The door to his rented room was unlocked, so they let themselves in after knocking and calling and receiving no response.

James didn't move from where he was standing near the window. He could feel rather than see the two of them pause, their eyes adjusting to the darkness, taking in the warped floorboards, the lumpy straw mattress, the way his clothing was thrown haphazardly over the back of a chair.

It was Jack who spoke first. “You’re a difficult man to track down these days, Commodore.” James bit his lip hard at the sound of that title dropping from that voice, too loud as it sought to fill the silence and emptiness in the drab room.

“James?” Will tried when he said nothing. They both moved closer, but only a few steps.

“Seven months.” He spat out the words. “Seven months and you think you can just come sauntering back in like nothing has happened.”

They talked over and around one another in their haste to explain.

“We heard about Port Royal, lad —”

“The fire, yes – but the weather’s been awful, we've been becalmed countless times, and before that we were stuck in St. Thomas for _weeks._ ”

“Got caught in a storm off the Gold Coast, the _Pearl_ was barely able to limp on to the island –”

“The repairs took forever – we had to hire out another ship to get the funds while she was docked.”

James’ scars were itching horribly. He thought he might have committed murder just for the opportunity to rub at them. “Pretty excuses,” he snapped.

“Now wait just a moment,” Will protested indignantly. Jack had fallen silent and James could feel his heavy gaze. His right eye started to twitch.

“It wasn't as if we didn't want to come,” Will was saying. “But if we’d set sail before the _Pearl_ was fully seaworthy again, we might all have been lost.”

“Lost on your way to rendezvous with your patient whore.” The bile ran into his speech as easily as blood spilling onto white bandages.

Will was angry now, his cheeks probably pink with it. “You know that isn't – dammit, James, what’s the _matter_ with you?”

“William.” Jack was perfect calm against Will’s storm of emotion. “Let it be.”

“But –”

“Please.” James could just barely catch, out of the corner of his eye, Jack leaning forward to placate him with a kiss. It was a familiar sight that he would normally have been glad to watch, but he did not move. The other man subsided grudgingly and Jack turned to James once more.

“Turn around, Jamie,” said Jack, his voice rough as sand even though his tone was gentle.

“No.” He shifted from foot to foot, looking out the window, showing them only the face he was willing to let them see, knowing he sounded like a sulking child.

“I’m going to strike a light and then it won’t matter.”

James could sense Will’s impatience to understand what they were talking about, but he held his tongue. So did James, beyond stubborn at this point.

There was a flare as Jack lit the lantern hanging near the door. He lifted it, held it aloft to shine upon James – upon his left side facing the window and then forward as he twisted defiantly to let them see, make them stare. Upon the burns, still angry-looking even as they healed, stretching across a good portion of his face and down under the collar of his loose shirt. Upon the sleeve pinned up under where his elbow had once been.

Will’s choked noise of shock echoed in the still room.

James let his eyes drift briefly over the horror in Will’s face before he settled them on Jack, who was looking at him with a great depth of sadness.

“I don’t need your pity,” he muttered.

“Then it’s a good thing I’m not offering any,” Jack replied mildly. “Only comfort.”

James started to shake with the effort of holding onto his anger. Jack stepped forward slowly, palm raised like he was approaching a skittish horse.

“Touch.” He raised his hand to the left side of James’ face, stilling him with a palm on his chest when he started to pull away. A violent shudder ran through James at the contact.

“And love,” he murmured, running his fingertips lightly over the puckered flesh, his eyes locked on James’ own. “Yes, always that.”

James fell forward then, sinking his face into Jack’s neck. He let go of his fury as he’d let go of Port Royal – only after he’d been broken by kindness rather than the ravages of the flames, the kindness of the butcher and the midwife treating him as he struggled and raved, and now the kindness of a pirate who should have been anything but. Jack caught him and clutched him tight, backing them both up to the narrow bed as James breathed hard against him and shut his burning eyes.

“Oh, Jamie, Jamie,” Jack whispered, pulling him down onto the thin mattress and shifting them back against the wall.

“They took – had to take my arm – _my arm_...” He could hear his voice rising but could do nothing to stop it.

“I know, sweet, I know.” Jack’s hand pressed gingerly against the amputated limb, still wrapped with strips of linen under the shirt because James couldn't bear to look at it.

“But look at you – you’re _alive_.” He formed the word against James’ temple with his lips, said it like a benediction. “And you’ll be all right because you won’t have t’be alone, not ever again, savvy?”

James breathed out a snort, half a laugh, partly a sob, more than a little hysterical. Jack – he had Jack with him again, more solid and less flighty than usual, substantial in all the ways his many dreams were not. And Will...

Will was creeping forward, pausing at the foot of the bed and looking at James with eyes that shone large and bright in the lamplight.

“I’m sorry,” he said, twisting his hands uselessly in front of him. “James, I’m sorry...”

Tucked against Jack, James reached the good arm out to him. “It doesn't matter. Come here, please?” Giving the bedframe a wary look as it creaked ominously beneath him, Will set himself up on James’ other side, taking his hand.

James spared a moment of wordless thanks to whomever might be listening. He had seen too much to be sure of that, but neither was he willing to discount it, not tonight at least.

Jack’s kisses, fragile against the damaged skin of his face, eventually found their way to his mouth. James parted his lips carefully to receive him, feeling the stretch and pull of the scars. Will’s open mouth drifted down his neck to a bared shoulder and he shared a small moue of pleasure against Jack’s questing tongue. In the darkest hours, he’d believed that he would never feel this again, never open up to these knowing touches and kisses again. As the weeks and months wore on it had become clear that his erstwhile lovers didn't want him like this, had stayed away to soften the blow, and James couldn't even say he blamed them.

He’d never been so glad to be wrong.

The air was beginning to stifle. Jack shifted beside him, bracing an arm to get better leverage. He broke the kiss with a muttered curse at the same time as Will pulled his mouth away from the nipple his teeth had been scraping.

“It’s been so _long_ ,” James sighed in frustration, trying to decide whose ear he should box first.

“What the hell’ve you been keeping in here?” Jack demanded, fumbling under the pillow.

“I think the bed is going to break,” said Will dubiously, patting the clumps of mattress on either side of him.

Jack came up with the bits of glass and stone. James took them from him and rolled them across his knuckles.

“All the rich things we gave you and you kept a bit of beach rubbish and a river rock?”

“They were in my pocket,” James murmured absently.

Will was still frowning down at the bed, its sheets rumpled now. “I mean it,” he said. “This frame is not structurally sound in the least.”

Jack wrapped his arms around James’ middle again, nuzzling his cheek. “Trust you to keep the rough elements and let the finery sink into the sea.”

“Well, it only seemed natural – didn't you tell me once that I’d make a bloody awful pirate?”

Jack paused, the playful grin on his face smoothing out into a more serious expression. “Perhaps,” he said, lipping James’ collarbone, “perhaps my opinion’s changed on that matter.”

“What?”

Will glanced up from where he was poking at the far corner of the bedframe. “Oh, we’re taking you with us,” he said matter-of-factly. “No arguments this time.”

Jack was gazing at him, the only sign of uncertainty visible in the way he couldn't stay focused on any one part of James’ face. “Will there be, James?”

James cast his eyes to the ceiling as he tried to think of an appropriate response.

If things had been different...well. Things _had_ been different. He had refused once, and never been asked again – until now.

He wasn't stupid. He knew he’d been effectively put out to pasture, commanding a desk instead of a squadron. It would have made a kind of sense to blame it on his injuries, but that was too simple. If he was to be honest with himself – and he was, generally, having picked up the habit right around the time Jack and Will had first caught him between them – it meant admitting that he’d gained a reputation for going soft these past few years. Oh, no one would dare speak of it to his face, of course, but there was a reason why the man who’d once been thought the sharpest young mind in the Navy had not been promoted or reassigned.

Two reasons, in fact, though his superiors would never know them as he knew them – two reasons who shared his bed and were now asking him to share what remained of his life with them, on the sea, away from constraints, from politics, from all the formal trappings that had not saved the citizens under his protection in Port Royal.

And in the end, all that needed to be said was ‘yes.’ So he said it.

They blinked at him in confusion and he amended, “No argument. Yes to the – the request.”

“The offer,” said Will, smiling at him.

“The command,” James added with a mock salute.

Jack shook his head. “No. No more commands.” Then he tackled James. Will shouted in alarm as the bed groaned, dipped, and finally snapped two of its legs under this final insult. James and Jack were sent tumbling to the floor, where they peered up at a smug Will.

“I _told_ you! I told you it wouldn't hold all three of us –” He was cut off by a sudden burst of pounding on the wall next to the bed and was soon sprawled beside them on the floor.

“I don’ care if y’are a commodore – don’ care if ye be the knave o’ hearts or the King o’ England or the bleedin’ Christ hissownself –”

“Oh, you’d make a splendid lamb of God, Jamie,” said Jack, deadpan. Will muffled a laugh against James' chest.

The bellowing continued. “– if that noise don’ quit, I’ll be over straightaway to tan yer lily hide!”

“My sincerest ap-apologies, Mrs. Hascombe,” James managed to call out. He grabbed Jack by his braided beard and kneed Will in the belly. “Do you have _any_ idea what would happen to all of us if that woman comes over here?” he hissed

They subsided for an instant.

“The good Christian lady would receive a highly enlightening education in the ancient art of buggery?” Jack suggested.

“We’d have a fourth person to help us break the rest of the bed?” Will offered.

James stared at them, mouth opening and closing soundlessly. His consternation lasted only moments, however, as he felt the familiar-unfamiliar build in his chest, realizing there was absolutely nothing he could do to prevent it as it rose up to sputter against his closed lips. It really was like a dam bursting, he reflected, the absurdity cracking his iron resolve to let free all the pain and stress. Will and Jack tried to distract him with a hand down his trousers, but they were laughing too hard themselves to have much effect.

The three of them stretched out on the dusty floor, shushing one another and suffering a few more neighborly assaults on the wall before they managed to calm themselves. James' ribs ached from the effort.

“I think...I've hurt meself,” said Jack, flexing his jaw.

“You did not,” Will scoffed. “You’d be whimpering like an infant if you had.”

Jack flailed his hand vaguely in James’ face. “Kick the whelp for me, there’s a good man.”

“What? Hmmm,” James replied, too busy tangling himself up with Will to carry out the request.

Will flung an arm over his hip. “One thing’s settled – we most certainly cannot sleep here tonight.”

“Th’ _Pearl’s_ calling,” Jack agreed, rubbing his nose between James’s shoulder blades. “Anything you want to bring along, love?”

James shook his head. “Just some clothing, perhaps. I haven’t much left.”

“You have us,” Will murmured, his throat rumbling under James’ ear.

“I thought we’d already established that. Keep up, won’t you?” Jack smacked James lightly on the flank. “Pack what you need and we’ll head out.”

Reluctantly James peeled away from the tangle of bodies, brushing himself off. It took only a few minutes to gather a bundle and collect his weapons, while Will and Jack yawned and watched him from the floor.

All the way out to the ship, James sat silent in the jolly boat, the implications of what he was doing striking him with force. Jack and Will, after a brief scuffle about who had rowed on the way in and who would be rowing on the way back, left him alone with his thoughts. Having won the argument, Jack rested his head in James’ lap and traced patterns on his thighs.

There was only man on watch, a portly fellow named Smith who tried to hide his bottle of rum down his trousers. Jack confiscated it with a grimace of disgust.

“I’m not drinking out of that,” Will informed him, “and I’m not sleeping with you if you do.” He looked to James for solidarity, but James could only offer a weak smile as he looked around the ship. The _Black Pearl_ was battered, but she was strong – he could feel that in the boards under his feet. And the way her sails tensed against the light wind, he guessed that she was as fast as Jack was always bragging. It was good to be at sea again, any lingering misgivings aside.

Jack flung the bottle over the side, waving them both on.

“Cabin,” Will said succinctly, stifling a yawn. “Bed.”

“A fine idea,” said Jack. James followed, now looking down at his feet, unsure of his bearings in the dark. Will reached out to steady him when he stumbled on a step.

Opening the cabin door with a flourish, Jack ushered him in first. Will made for the bunk in the corner.

James glanced around the cabin as Jack lit a lantern. It was smaller than he’d expected, though bigger than his own quarters usually were, and it was meticulously tidy, probably thanks to Will. There was a bit of flash here and there, but on the whole it was not the grand boudoir a man like Jack might have had. Although the bunk, unsurprisingly, was large and well-appointed.

A finger in the small of his back prodded him toward it. Will had already removed his boots and was pulling the coverlet back.

“When you said ‘bed,’” James asked, balancing on the edge, “did you mean ‘sleep’?”

The corner of Jack’s mouth twitched. “If you want.”

'

JWill's arms came around him from behind and he leaned into the embrace. “I want..." He held Jack’s gaze as the captain knelt before him on the bed. “I can’t begin to say how much I want.”

“Whatever it is, you’ll get it,” Will said, kissing his ear.

He watched them undress, stealing kisses and brief touches, but when two pairs of hands slipped under his own shirt, he flinched.

“Now, now,” Jack said firmly, “none of that.” James closed his eyes as he let them lift the shirt off, revealing the extent of the scarring. He opened them again when he felt tentative fingers brushing over it, exploring as thoroughly as his reticence would allow.

“Do they hurt?” Will asked curiously, ducking his head down to examine a back that had recently resembled raw meat and still bore the memory. He had little myriad burns from years spent working a forge – James had spent hours mapping them out – but nothing of this magnitude.

“Not anymore,” James replied, trying to hold himself still. The healing skin was sensitive and he was unused to being touched. “They itch, sometimes. Mostly they’re only ugly.” His voice held only a trace of bitterness.

“Could be worse,” said Jack. He tugged at the fastenings on James’ breeches, reaching in to grasp his hardening cock. “Could have lost something else near and dear.” James' mouth twitched at Jack's intractable nature.

Will carefully licked at his neck, across a burn, and he stiffened. It wasn't exactly painful, but it was – strong; a sensation he didn't quite understand.

“Don’t,” he said, and Will nodded, kissing him instead, curling his tongue in James’ mouth. James gripped his shoulder and lifted up so Jack could tug his breeches over his hips. They joined the puddle of clothing on the floor.

He was content to let the other two direct operations, perfectly willing to let Jack pull him onto his lap, where a familiar hardness pressed against his backside and drew an answering ache from his own body. He dug his hand into the mattress and leaned hard to one side, Jack’s hands on his hips raising him up enough to have Will part him with slick fingers before sinking slowly back down onto Jack. He covered Jack’s arms, gathered tight around his waist, with his own as they rocked slowly, his legs twined around Jack’s. Jack freed one hand to distractedly flick his hair out of the way as he bent his mouth to James’ neck and shoulder, on his right side. He could feel the echoing twinges on his left, as if phantom lips and teeth were nibbling at him there.

Will rose above him, his knees spanning them both and his hands on James’ shoulders as he lowered himself. James let out a moan and adjusted the tilt of his body to push deep into him, sliding home - _home_ \- Jack within him and Will cleaved by him, both of them all around him.

Will brushed kisses against his brow, his eyelids, his nose, meeting Jack briefly over his shoulder before covering his mouth to take breath and helpless cries into his body as well.

He lost track of time and place as they matched the rocking of the ship at anchor. He lost track of parts of himself – what he was, what he had done, what had been done to him – but he didn't care because he knew who he was, or rather remembered. In this bed, in this night, it flashed across his closed lids like the afterimage of crashing lightning: he was James and he was theirs, as they were his, and that could not be burned away. And this – the rush of sensation in the dark, the joy of it, it was theirs too. Even though he had never believed in the supernatural beyond the anomaly of the cursed pirates, there was something of another world in this union, some thought that needn't be spoken because it was chasing itself through all of them as they sought a horizon of their own making.

Yet he fought it still, that final surrender, struggling between them even as he quickened. Murmuring to him words that were less important than the sound of voices breaking, they held on against panic. A whimper of alarm escaped his lips as he came because it was so much like losing consciousness in the fire, but he had Will and Jack to pull him free again, and he was not afraid. They laid him down in their arms, and he was not alone.

When he didn't open his eyes, Jack poked him in concern. “Jamie? You all right?”

“Yes,” James murmured. “Just...” He shook his head mutely. It was a strange thing, to belong. They arranged themselves more comfortably, Will curved along his back and Jack pressed against his front, hand tucked under the stump of his arm. He was not surprised to feel the damp tracks of tears on his face, nor the touch of rough lips upon them.

He felt the thrum behind him as Will began to sing in a voice that was low and strong, if a bit off-key. Jack joined in after a moment’s hesitation. Still buoyed by the strange new tenderness flooding him, James didn't catch the lyrics completely, but it was something about a fishmonger and her wheelbarrow, sad and sweet. He thought it might have been Irish. There was a whisper about a ghost that he caught just before he fell asleep, protected by the beams of the ship, the rhythm of the sea, and the grip of the men beholden to both.

**Author's Note:**

> Brief historical note: plot inspired by a great fire in 1703 that mostly destroyed what was left of Port Royal after the 1692 earthquake. Also, "Molly Malone" isn't really old enough to be in this setting, but I was obsessed with it at the time I wrote this, so there you are.


End file.
